Inside a cell in the mental health tier of the Dallas County Jail, a 56-year-old man lay unconscious on the bloodied floor. Javier Leal, once a disco DJ, spinning beats in nightclubs around the world in the '70s, was dying.

His head was bashed in, and his cellmate, Patrick Martin, stood over him with Leal's blood on his hands. Martin admitted that he'd punched and stomped Leal without provocation.

Leal never awoke. He died New Year's Eve.

Javier Leal was killed by his cellmate at the Dallas County Jail, authorities say.

(Family photo)

The account described in a Dallas County Sheriff's Department affidavit raises questions about whether Leal's death could have been prevented, his family and jail experts say.

For one thing, the family is concerned that guards didn't seem to be paying attention to that cell. Officers learned of the beating only after Martin decided he was done, and called the guards himself saying, "Help me," the affidavit states.

"It obviously wasn't a quick two hits," said Leal's son, David Leal, 25. "For no one to have noticed until somebody called for help, that's pretty shocking."

Homicides inside jails are rare and usually preventable — but not always, said California jail security expert Jeffrey Schwartz, who has testified for the U.S. Department of Justice in jail reform cases. Well-run jails have low rates of inmate violence, he said.

"I've been in large jails where inmate-on-inmate violence was near zero," Schwartz said.

A Dallas County sheriff's spokeswoman, Melinda Urbina, said Friday that she couldn't provide the number of deaths in 2016 or whether any were homicides. The jail has passed eight straight state inspections, after years of failing.

In general, Schwartz said, an inmate killing a cellmate raises the following questions: Did jailers adequately assess both prisoners' violent behavior before placing them together? Were they properly supervised? How long did staff take to intervene?

Those are all questions that the Texas Commission on Jail Standards will seek to answer as it conducts a routine review of cell check logs, inmate classification records and investigative reports on the incident. The commission will look for violations of its rules, such as mandatory checks at least every 30 minutes for inmates with mental health issues.

"We do a review and report on every death in custody for county jails," said Brandon Wood, the commission's executive director. "It helps us ensure there's not some pattern that has developed."

If investigators find any rules that were broken and that contributed to the death, they will find the jail noncompliant. Then the jail has to submit a plan for addressing the problems and prove that they've been fixed.

Requiring notice

While jails are required to notify the state commission about deaths in custody within 24 hours, there are no rules for disclosure to the public.

Even so, Schwartz said it's a common practice nationwide for jails to let the public know when someone dies in a jail, even if it's still under investigation and details must remain vague.

Sheriff Lupe Valdez, who was re-elected to a fourth term in November, has pledged transparency as a top priority. But her office has been less than forthcoming about in-custody deaths, often not issuing any news releases about them.

In this case, the department issued no news release about Leal's death. The department confirmed three days after the fact that Leal had died but declined to answer questions about each inmate's classification or the department's handling of them.

The department said the death remained under investigation, but it released a statement that described both men being "involved in a physical altercation" and that staff "separated the two inmates."

The affidavit paints a dramatically different picture of an extended attack, by the aggressor's own admission.

Patrick Martin was rebooked on a new charge after authorities say he confessed to fatally beating Javier Leal.

(Dallas County Sheriff's Department)

According to the affidavit, Martin, 39, told investigators that he'd been transferred to Leal's cell in the early hours of Dec. 30. Leal was lying on the bottom bunk. Martin went to use the cell's toilet and felt Leal's "body heat," flinched and then punched Leal in the face "without provocation," according to the affidavit. Leal fell out of the bed onto his knees, and grabbed Martin's waist, so Martin punched Leal's face with both fists, then hit Leal with "at least 30 elbow strikes," the affidavit says. Leal fell to the floor, his head striking the toilet, and then Martin allegedly stomped him. Martin described hearing Leal "breathing hard," so he decided to push the intercom for help at 2:13 a.m.

Four officers responded to the cell, and a nurse was summoned. Leal was sent to Parkland Memorial Hospital at 2:51 a.m., unconscious and unresponsive. His injuries, says the affidavit included: "a severe laceration to the center of his forehead, a cut on his eye that was bleeding from the side, an injury to his jaw that appeared to be broken and his ear was severely swollen."

He was taken off life support the next day. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide due to blunt force head injury.

After reading the affidavit, Diana Claitor, the executive director of the Texas Jail Project, an inmate advocacy group, said the Sheriff's Department statement about what happened was misleading.

"The statement by the sheriff's office didn't describe the type of attack this was," she said. "It was vague and not too close to what their own officers described."

She said it's important for jails to keep the public informed of what goes on behind bars — especially if someone is killed.

"It does not sound like this was handled in a transparent manner," Claitor said. "That lack of transparency, that kind of protective, defensive reaction — it's definitely unfortunate when you're dealing with citizens' lives."

A history of violence

Martin had a long conviction history of violence, court records show. He'd been booked into the jail Dec. 10 by DART police who accused him of hitting three men. He has pleaded guilty to five assaults, one aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, six trespassing counts and one indecent exposure.

Leal, meanwhile, hadn't shown any signs of violence until his 50s, said his son, David. Leal grew up in Mexico and became a disco DJ — going by the name "DJ Climaco" — in the 1970s and 1980s.

Javier Leal was a disco DJ in the 1970s and 1980s who went by DJ Climaco.

(Courtesy)

Leal married, had three kids, and decided to move his family in 2000 to Dallas for a chance at a better life. He started working as a construction day laborer, then worked his way up to managing jobs and eventually started a company, Climaco Manpower, that supplied big firms construction workers. He was a skilled communicator and negotiator, his son said, and also ran a music-recording studio out of his Farmers Branch home.

Around 2013, though, Leal started to act different and "his conscience began to fade," his son said. The following year, Dallas County records show, Leal was arrested for the first time at 53. His daughter accused him of pulling her hair and punching her after she quit working for him, records show. His ex-wife told police he'd forced her to the ground and sent her threatening text messages, court records show.

In this undated family photo, Javier Leal plays with his children. (Courtesy)

He was found too mentally ill to stand trial last February, and was ordered to undergo treatment. He'd been booked back into the jail in July and was awaiting trial.

David Leal said Thursday that he didn't want to know any of that — not even why his dad was in jail in the first place.

"Whatever caused him to end up there was not the father that I grew up with," he said. "He was not himself. He should've been in a special treatment area, not in a jail cell, especially not with someone violent."